Magazine
publishers

(4130 to BBC)

This is one of six pages about UK consumer
magazine publishers (with links to their international owners),
listed alphabetically, and their magazines. List of publishers on
this page to the right. Consumer magazines and consumer
specialist magazines are
sold to members of the public through newsagents and subscriptions.

328 Media is based in Lewes, Sussex. It launched Kiteworld
in May 2001 as a worldwide kiteboarding magazine. This now claims to be
distributed in more than 60 countries, six times a year. Also carried
on Mpora
extreme sports magazine portal.

ACP-NatMags was a joint venture set up in December 2004 between
the Hearst-owned National Magazine Company and Australia's ACP
(controlled by Packer family) to publish women's weeklies in the UK. However,
in 2008, NatMags bought out ACP's half stake. The joint operation controlled
NatMags
women's weeklies Best and Reveal. Its first launch was Real
People (Project
Star) in January 2006 into the crowded real lives sector with a £6m
marketing budget and extensive research.
ACP is the largest publisher in
Australia with 65 titles, including local editions of Hearst's women's
glossies Cosmopolitan
and Harper's Bazaar. It publishes the top-selling women's monthly,
Australian Women's Weekly, the country's longest-running magazine,
The Bulletin, founded in 1880, and the most popular weekly magazine,
Woman's Day.

Extreme sports publisher that was part of a three-way merger forming Factory Media in December 2006. ASM head office is in London with editorial offices in Munich,
Germany and Anglet, France. Four titles
are distributed in 74 countries.

Anthem Publishing was formed in late 2002 by Jon Bickley, Paul Pettengale and Simon Lewis, who had all worked at Future in Bath. Its first launch was Music Tech in March 2003. It has 10 titles on music technology, homes and holidays, food and drink, and sport. Anthem also does some contract publishing. In October 2010 it bought IPC's Guitar & Bass.

Italia (M):
for home buyers and people with a passion for the country, its people,
culture, food and drink. Published on the first Thursday of every month;
launched in November 2004

Music Tech (M): practical title for recording musicians,
engineers and producers. Launched in 2003 and sold in UK and overseas

Sporting Legends : irregular title celebrates sportsmen
and sporting achievements, such as George Best, Bobby Moore, superstars
of the World Cup and football in the nineties

Taste
Italia (M): recipes and features on Italian produce and
producers; also reviews of wine and restaurants. Published on the
first Thursday of the month; launched November 2006

With operations in UK, Germany and Australia, Attic Futura launched Sugar, That’s Life! and Inside Soap before selling them on and being absorbed as part of HFUK. In 2011, a spin-off company was publishing three children’s titles in the UK: National Geographic Kids, football weekly Kick! and Kraze Club.

H. Bauer is a German company that took over Emap's
consumer arm in February 2008. It leapt from being the third-largest
consumer magazine publisher in the UK to overtake IPC with more than 80 titles and about 25%
of the consumer market. HBP Media Sales sells the advertising in Bauer's UK magazines. H. Bauer claims to be the largest privately-owned magazine
publisher in Europe. Bauer's magazines have tended to focus on readers
rather than advertisers. Women's weeklies Bella, Take
a Break
and That's Life! take about 40% market share; its trio of TV titles
take near a third of the listings sector. Bauer shook up UK women's
weeklies in 1987 with Bella's mix of real-life articles and 'service'
features. Similar splash with Take a Break in 1990. However, it
had a string of failures between 2002 and 2007: Cut, Real, Lounge, Three-Sixty and In
the Know.

Bauer acted swiftly to axe two Emap titles, weekly First and New
Woman. In April, it ended a long-standing relationship whereby
The
Publishing Consultancy sold advertising for Bauer titles, bringing
UK ad sales and the TPC staff in-house. Bauer continued Emap's strategy of
launching radio stations based on magazines.
It revamped Q Radio and launched Closer radio on Freeview.
The company also revealed it was researching the possibility of a radio station
for men, based on
brands such as FHM and Empire.

Bella (W): content based on practical features and real-life
stories. Targets B, C1 and C2 women aged 25-44 with children, median
age is 44. Launched in October 1987

Blush! (F): August 2002 launch for 10 to 14-year-old girls

Cut (W): poor start in August for men's weekly; closed in December
2004

In
the Know (W):
2006 launch -
closed in May 2007. Apart from puzzle titles, Bauer's first
new title since the short-lived men's weekly Cut men's
weekly in 2004 and its first women's magazine since That's
Life in
1995. Investment of £10m
in a ‘topical and relevant’ weekly.

Lounge (M): March 2004 launch with print run of 350,000 for
puzzle monthly in women's weekly format. Closed after six issues

Puzzle portfolio of about 20 brands, ranging in frequency from 4
to 13 a year. Some use Take a ... title. Total sales can exceed
900,000 in the summer months

Real (F): women's fortnightly in glossy format appeared in
April 2001 at £1.50. Redesigned in 2003 with lower production
values and £1 price tag. Median female age of readers 33, with
more upmarket, younger target than weeklies: ABC1 women aged 25-40.
Sold to Essex based Essential in
summer 2004 but closed in early 2007

Take a Break (W): UK's biggest-selling women's weekly at 1.2
million copies (claims to be the fourth largest-selling women's weekly
in the world). March 1990 launch. Real-life stories, prize puzzles and
competitions and classic weekly elements. Eschews celebrities. Has brand
extensions selling 20 million copies a year. Launched CD of music from
TV commercials in summer 1999

Take a Break spin-offs include Fate & Fortune and
Fiction Feast

That's Life (W): Young, mass market women with children buy
more than 600,000 copies a week. June 1995 debut

Three Sixty (Q): February 2003 home lifestyle offering in
a square format. Upmarket move for the company, but closed by summer

Total TV Guide (W) September 2003 launch aiming at upmarket
households. Ten pages a day cover 90 channels. 85p at end of 2004

TV Choice (W): August 1999 launch at cheap end of the market
(40p in 2003-04). Expanded listings market to become third-biggest seller

TV Quick (W): Attempts to be a women's magazine, celebrity
TV magazine and a listings magazine combined. Launched March 1991
(65p in 2003-04)

In August 2011, BBC Worldwide agreed to sell or license its magazines to Exponent, a private equity firm that owned Magicalia, for £121m and offload its joint venture in India. The BBC titles and Magicalia were tthen folded in Immediate Media. Essentials of the deals included:

Exponent buys all non-BBC-branded magazines – including Radio Times;

Exponent to publish BBC titles under licence or as contract magazines;

Exponent to take subscriptions and distribution businesses, Dovetail and Frontline;

Magazines had been part of the BBC's
commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, which generates revenue to put back into
programme-making. BBC Magazines bought Origin in 2004 but a review in
December saw it decide to sell non-core titles, such as Eve and
many of the Origin portfolio, and end on-screen advertising of its magazines.
In April 2006, sold off most of the original Origin titles to a management
buy-out team, but kept the contract titles and Origin's Focus.
Put retained titles into new arm, Bristol
Magazines. Trades on the Britishness of its ouput in the US and launched US only magazine, Knowledge, in 2008; in 2010, this was made available in the UK. In 2010, the company had 51 international editions of its titles being sold in 60 countries with licensing or syndication partners.

Launched the Radio Times and the Listener in the 1920s.
In 1955, Radio Times claimed 'the largest sale of any weekly magazine in the world' with 8,832,579 copies a week (Life in the US was selling 5.6m). Despite the success of this and its book publishing, did little else until the
1980s when it licensed the Clothes Show title to a small London
publisher. Also, the wildlife films unit in Bristol set up a magazine
with another publisher. By then, Radio Times was selling 3 million copies a week. However, revenue
was threatened when government decided to force both IPC (owned the TV Times) and the BBC to sell listings to other publishers. (The resultant
spate of launches cut RT sales to a million copies.) To offset
the revenue loss, the BBC bought Redwood,
which published Acorn
User magazine for the BBC Micro (runner-up to Just Seventeen
in 1984 as best launch), Educational Computing and contract
titles for customers of Intercity, American Express and M&S.

BBC/Redwood developed proposals for the best-watched subjects on the
BBC. The first result was Good Food, then Gardeners' World
and Home & Antiques. The BBC later sold Redwood, retained the
BBC titles and carried on launching. There were some failures: Holidays,
Good Health, Tomorrow's World, Match of the Day (closed when
BBC lost rights to screen premiership football in 2001) and Star; Clothes
Show closed in 1998. The best titles, Gardeners' World
and Good Food, revolutionised their sectors. Has adult; teen; pre-teen
(age 7-12); educational; and pre-school titles.

Has digital asset management system, allowing it to syndicate words and
pictures, and several joint businesses: Frontline distributors with Emap
and Haymarket; BBC Haymarket Exhibitions; and Galleon, for subscriptions.

Clothes Show: First of the modern BBC-related launches. Licensed
by BBC. Later taken over and revamped by BBC/Redwood. Never really accepted
as BBC brand. Closed 1998

Eve
(M): Bought by Haymarket in
2005. August 2000 launch aiming for mature women: the Cosmopolitan
generation who wouldn't want to buy the magazines their mothers had.
£2m marketing budget; very experienced launch team. Known as 'project
Urma'. Marketing Week quoted target circulation of 150,000 (July
6, p12). Competes with Hachette's Red and Nat Mags' She in
a difficult 30-something mid-market where the target readership is diverse.
IPC's Women's Journal and Nova, Dennis's PS and
Parkhill's Aura have all become a cropper here. To be sold as
part of review by BBC of commercial activities

Focus (M) : launched by Gruner + Jahr in 1982; sold to NatMags
from when G+J retreated from the UK; bought by Origin in 2001; branded
as a BBC title and retained when Origin sold off. The BBC tried to launch
a competitor - Tomorrow's World - but this was an abject failure
and closed within a year in 1998. Because of the strength of the German Focus brand internationally, the BBC used the title Science in Focus for licensed editions.

Good Food (M) First of the BBC/Redwood launches and an instant
success, despite negative industry reaction. IPC was incensed by the
free TV trailers. Title distributed in US. In 2008, 22,616 copies a month were being sold overseas

Knowledge ( 6 a year; US and Canada): first North American-specific launch in August 2008. The editor was Sally Palmer with US science journalist John Horgan (Stevens Institute of Technology) consultant editor. BBC Worldwide distributed 60,000 copies at launch and 80,000 for the second issue. This followed a 1.3m direct mailing. CMG was the newsagent distributor and the title was sold at Barnes & Noble, Borders and Hudson News airport shops in the US. Andy Benham, publishing director said: 'The magazine has been positioned to capitalize on the strength of the BBC’s brand in the US and while the content will feed American interests, the Britishness and BBC-ness of the magazine are seen as being key assets.' The magazine was licensed to The Institute of Science Culture & Education in Korea, which planned to publish 12 editions a year. Editions were then launched in Brazil, Singapore, Bulgaria and Malaysia; and in the UK (focusing on subscriptions) in October 2010. The title will also be published in India from November 2010 by Worldwide Media, a joint venture with the Times of India. BBC Knowledge is a television channel in Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

The Listener (W): Founded in 1929 and closed in 1991. Weekly review of radio programmes with transcripts of the best broadcasts. The Listener Crossword, first published on 2 April 1930, lives on in The Times, where it has been published every Saturday since no. 3090 on 23 March 1991. In 1941, Benjamin Britten read an article, ‘George Crabbe: the Poet and the Man’ by E.M. Forster in the May issue of The Listener. This inspired an interest for him in the work of George Crabbe, a fellow East Anglian born in the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh in 1754, and led to the writing of the opera Peter Grimes, which had its first production in June 1945 at London’s Sadler's Wells theatre

Lonely Planet (M) 2008 launch of magazine followed controversial takeover of the travel guide publisher in 2007. By 2010, there were 9 international editions

Match of the Day Launched 1995. Closed when BBC lost rights to screen premiership football in 2001

Music
(M): launched September 1992. Claims to be world's best-selling classical
music magazine. March 1993 debut in US; autumn 94 for German language
and overseas English versions. run by Bristol Magazines division. In 2008, 22,030 copies a month were being sold overseas

Olive
(quarterly; Christmas 2003). 'Eating + Living + Going Places.' Did not
use BBC branding. Launched at same time as version of Australian title
Delicious from Seven in the UK, led by ex-BBC/Redwood staff

Radio Times
(W): Claims to be UK's most profitable magazine. Launched in September
1923, it was the UK's biggest-selling magazine until overtaken by Reader's
Digest in 1993

Sky at Night (M): launched by BBC Origin and retained as
part of Bristol Magazines division

Star (closed 2001) Codename Project G, a celebrity-led fortnightly
glossy for teens, based on the US titles Entertainment Weekly,
Teen People and US Weekly (each sell 1.5m copies a week).
£2m backing for Oct 2000 launch; print run 400,000. Target sales
200,000. Closed after a year

Tomorrow's World failed within a year, despite the programme's
success and cover-mounts

Top Gear
(M) Spin-off from TV programme, which was attracting 5m viewers
a week, became top-selling motoring monthly. Launched September 1993

Top of the Pops (Fortnightly). March 1995 launch

What
to Wear : quarterly spin-off from Trinny and Suzanna programmes. Closed